


Battle With the Beast, a timeloop shortfic

by gabrielsingskaraoke



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Battle with the Beast, F/M, Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 17:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11994273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielsingskaraoke/pseuds/gabrielsingskaraoke





	Battle With the Beast, a timeloop shortfic

Quentin Coldwater was listening to the sound of a clock. 

It was so far away that it was easy to miss, hidden under the sound of screaming and crunching bones. He had heard enough. He would have closed his eyes, but they weren't there to close. They were... somewhere else.

He had heard one roll and bounce, and wondered if it had found its way to stare unblinking at Alice. At what used to be Alice. 

Quentin focused on the sound of the clock. The tick and the tock and the louder it got the more he wondered if this was what dying felt like. If it felt like losing your mind and being trapped inside something that used to be you. If it felt like life before magic.

The clock kept ticking. Quentin tried to laugh, but the sound died on a gurgle that made him wish he had not tried. The Watcher Woman was coming, he thought. Of course she would, just when he wouldn't be able to see her. Another mystery of Fillory not meant for him. 

And the Beast was so oblivious to it all. Too busy burying itself into the fallen few - the too stupid to run away and too weak to win - too powerful to concern himself with the ticking of a clock when his playthings were still trying to crawl away. Quentin wondered if he should be trying to crawl away, but then he remembered the laugh. Perhaps, sometimes, it was better to try nothing at all. 

It was just as Quentin began to think how depressing it all was and how much more it made him hate the Beast, that Time itself unwound. 

-

Quentin woke up with a start. His clock read 5:31 am. There was an hour before his alarm would go off, but of course the nightmare was back again. He tried to pull himself away from Alice, but his arm was trapped. He heard Eliot's pocket watch ticking, forgotten somewhere in the hallway. The nightmare was tugging at the edge of Quentin's consciousness, but he didn't want to think of it. 

He lost himself in the numbness of his arm, the smell of Alice's hair and their sheets. There was something he was supposed to remember. It was important. It wasn't about how Alice's eyelids fluttered as she slept, but eyes... there was something about eyes. There was something.

Quentin Coldwater slipped back into sleep, listening to the sound of a clock.


End file.
